Research: BC/DR and the Cloud

Kurt Marko11/01/11

Research: Cloud’s Role in BC/DR

Cloud services can play a role in any business continuity and disaster recovery plan. Yet if our readership is any indication, these services are largely untapped—just 23% of the 414 business technology professionals responding to our InformationWeek 2011 Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Survey use cloud services as part of their application and data resiliency strategies, even though half correctly say it would reduce overall recovery times.

In this report, we’ll examine the state of business continuity planning in the enterprise while looking at trends over the past year; outline the types of data and applications most often protected; go over typical disaster recovery design parameters, like data set sizes and recovery windows; and summarize the features respondents expect out of a cloud backup and DR service before signing on the dotted line.

Fact is, the combination of cloud backup and virtual machine IaaS offerings can be a beneficial part of a “DR 2.0” plan. Yet cloud services still face resistance in many corners of IT, including a sizable share of our survey respondents. Their reservations are most commonly driven by concerns over data security, service reliability, vendor performance and data lock-in; however, new cloud security and audit standards, distributed cloud data centers, and tighter SLAs mean these needn’t be roadblocks to adoption. We’ll wrap up by outlining three cloud DR architectures, each progressively more sophisticated and resilient, and sum up how best to introduce the cloud into your overall DR design. (R3271111)

Survey Name InformationWeek Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery SurveySurvey Date July 2011Region North AmericaNumber of Respondents 414

Purpose To determine business continuity/disaster recovery plans in the enterprise, with a focus on incorporating cloud services.